Originally Posted by
Onceapilot
I would be more impressed if you could offer valid reasons that the QEc project is worth the damage that it is doing to other more important UK Defence capabilities.
OAP
What capabilities are being damaged? Spell it out for us.
Also if people post things to do with the capabilities provided by carrier aircraft, you immediately dismiss it as irrelevant. If anyone points out we have been doing carrier-like role in recent years, including as part of NATO and supporting coalition operations in the Middle East, you dismiss it as irrelevant. If anyone points out a carrier would have been useful in the last few years, you dismiss as irrelevant. If anyone refers to Geopolitical events, you dismiss it as irrelevant.
You ask me to stop telling you about things you know about - are you saying you know a carrier is essential to fighting wars at sea or from it?
What would you say to
this post over on ARRSE?
Well, one reason we're not even more short on ships is because of the carriers: there was a proposal in the 2010 SDSR that not only should the RN lose the four Type 22 Batch 3 frigates that were scrapped early to save cash, but that the five "general purpose" Type 23s should also be sold or scrapped. The need to maintain escort numbers at the bare minimum (well, actually the bare minimum reduced by the Treasury saying 'the Navy will just have to work a bit harder' and the PM saying "I'm bored with all this, just cut here, here and here") to form a workable Carrier Task Group, was what deflected that: without the carriers, we could easily be down to fourteen DD/FF today.
Think we'd be doing better or worse, as a result?
Anyway: Whilst not a carrier, HMS
Ocean could be fairly described as carrier like. A few months ago she was diverted from the Mediterranean to the Caribbean at short notice, then she returned to the Mediterranean
for the NATO SNMG2 flagship role.
More recently, she has been the other side of the Mediterranean,
taking part in a NATO exercise.
Two Jungly Merlin HC3 and two Wildcat AH1 from 847 NAS does not seem a particularly large airgroup, given she can carry far more than that.